Day 2

This morning started off with a jog at 7 am. Four of us met Professor Hamakawa and he led us through a park to the edge of the River Thames and we jogged along there. We stopped at different locations and he pointed out signs and interesting facts.  Unfortunately, our university is on a hill, so jogging back up that was pretty terrible and hard. We did about three miles in 30 minutes, and later he showed us where our classrooms were.  Then, after taking a shower, which was a feat in itself because my head hit the shower head multiple times, and the fact that there is nowhere to keep shampoo and stuff, I met up with Emelia and Professor Hamakawa and ate breakfast, which included rice krispies and banana for me.

After breakfast our teacher took us on a walking tour of Richmond.  He basically showed us downtown Richmond and it is so picturesque. There's so many different alleys and cafes and shops to explore and so much to see. Weirdly, the quickest way through to the downtown is down an alley where gravestones line it on the side. We also took touristy pictures near a phone booth.  Professor Hamakawa showed us where the Tube station was, gave us Oyster cards that WNE nicely filled us with 45 pounds, and took us to places like Tesco and Waitrose to buy towels, shampoo, toothpaste, etc. However, the walk took a lot longer than expected so we all had to walk the three hour tour with laundry detergent in our hands so it was a very long walk.  We were able to watch people play cricket and canoe and play in the park and it was nice to just people watch for a change.  One lady insulted us at Tesco, but other than that I think we're doing okay.

After the three hour walk, we all went to lunch and agreed to meet up to start planning our trips.  We met up in an empty classroom and started making a list of where everyone wanted to go. It was pretty hectic and cliques were forming so in the end we kind of all made our own plans after booking one trip to Paris together (although only 9?/15 are going).  The planning took a lot longer than expected, so after planning we went straight to supper, where I got to try salmon pasta which was really good and potato and parsnip soup. After supper four of us went back out to explore more of Richmond and took more photos and just talked about other places we wanted to go together.

At about 8:00, the University was hosting a pub crawl. Groups were led out by RAs from the main entrance and then led to 5 different pubs, the Lass, Roebuck, Revolution, etc. It was pretty lame to be honest, as no one in our group wanted to waste money so we basically just walked around outside until everyone was done and we moved on to the next pub.  It was cool to see the insides of them and take pictures.  We also got to meet a lot of new people today.  We continued moving to different pubs, losing some people on the way, and just took pictures and talked.  The last pub was a gay pub, and everyone seemed to like that one the most.  Also, on Thursdays they do karaoke, which I think is where we will be tomorrow. It was just a time to meet new people and talk and walk more.  It was poorly run though and one pub actually told us not to come in because there was so many people and the groups weren't really organized.  We all walked back as a group together for the night.